The company recently signed a lease for 180,000 square feet at 85 Tenth Ave., a brick former Nabisco cookie factory by the High Line, according to Vornado Realty Trust, one of the building’s landlords. Read More »

For its first physical store, Amazon has picked a bustling Manhattan block awash in the constant flow of office workers, shoppers and tourists headed to the Empire State Building across the street.

Located at 7. W. 34th St., the building is about a block east of Herald Square, where the Macy’s Inc.’s flagship store anchors a shopping corridor and ranks as a tourist destination in its own right. Nearby are other big retailers: Victoria’s Secret, the Gap and J.C. Penney

Retail asking rents in the Herald Square and 34th Street stretch don’t compare to the tonier upper Fifth Avenue addresses where Apple Inc. has a store–marked by the famous cube–and Microsoft Corp. plans to open a Manhattan flagship location. Average asking rents midyear were $2,749 a square foot on upper Fifth Avenue, and $775 a square foot in the 34th Street shopping area, according to Cushman & Wakefield, a real-estate services firm. Read More »

David Benjamin, owner of UberBeauty, an on demand beauty service that makes house calls, styles the hair of Joanlee Montefusco at her home in East Hampton on July 24.

Gordon M. Grant for The Wall Street Journal

Halfway through a Bridgehampton dinner party of striped bass and grilled leeks, James Slattery and 14 of his friends ran out of their favorite wine, a local Wolffer Rose.

Mr. Slattery pulled out his phone, and, using a new app called Minibar, solved the quandary without anyone leaving the house.

“Within 20 minutes, a happy driver was knocking on the door with more wine,” Mr. Slattery, a 31-year old consultant, said about the beverage that he affectionately refers to as “Hamptons Gatorade.”

Minibar, which lets local liquor stores sell online and deliver quickly to their customers, is just one of many services tailored to making the easy lives of beachgoers on the eastern end of Long Island even easier.

A man carries red roses through slushy streets on Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, 2014.

Getty Images

If being snowed in was your excuse for not having romantic plans last Valentine’s Day, you might have a chance to redeem yourself.

A New Jersey assemblyman is asking for a “Half St. Valentine’s Day” in August to make up for the terrible weather ruining the holiday this year.

State Assemblyman John McKeon introduced a resolution last week asking that Gov. Chris Christie designate Aug. 14 “Half St. Valentine’s Day,” a repeat of a holiday that presents “people around the world with the opportunity to exchange gifts of affection and appreciation with loved ones,” according to the resolution. Read More »

Bars and restaurants have always had to hustle to attract business in cutthroat New York City. But lately, some business owners have targeted attention-grabbing efforts on sidewalk sandwich-board signs, as The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. The A-frame slates are the canvas for baritas and barkeeps looking to stop passersby in their tracks — and hopefully lure them inside. And the messages are often edgy, creative or whimsical. Readers from Brooklyn, Manhattan and beyond tweeted their favorite sandwich board signs, and we’re including some of the best here.

Umbrellas along 5th Avenue in the Flatiron neighborhood of Manhattan in May 2013.

Adrienne Grunwald for The Wall Street Journal

New Yorkers seem to have a reputation: they move fast and have little patience for inconvenience. And lugging umbrellas, especially when they’re simply a precaution, can feel like just that.

But there might be another way, say the creators of ‘brellaBox, a sharing system in which commuters can rent umbrellas from strategically located boxes.

The idea is to have 500 boxes throughout the city that will offer users the ability to rent umbrellas, $2.50 for 12 hours, or to purchase an umbrella for $15. But the difference between these umbrellas and those you buy at the corner store will be the quality, its founders say. And the umbrellas can be picked up and dropped off at any of the boxes, just like Citi Bike (or the DO School’s “Good To Go” to-go cup sharing system, profiled by WSJ last week.) Read More »

One of world’s biggest companies gets a court order to stop sales of your product next week. What do you do?

Give it away. That what six-person Hello Product LLC is doing after losing its fight with Procter & Gamble Co., the world’s largest consumer-products company.

P&G contacted Hello last April to tell them their label was false and misleading because ingredients in Hello’s toothpaste like sodium lauryl sulfate and sorbitol are chemically processed, according to court documents. In June Hello agreed to strip the claim from its next batch of printing. But in January, P&G forced the issue with a lawsuit and the two sides agreed to an injunction to stop selling any toothpaste with that label, starting March 25.

So Friday, four days before the order goes into effect, Hello plans to hand out its remaining stock of around 100,000 bottles of that toothpaste on the streets of Manhattan.

Brett Bara poses for a photograph in the craft room of her apartment in Greenpoint.

As a child growing up in the small town of Wampum, Pa., Brett Bara never imagined that her love of knitting, sewing and gardening would one day turn into a career.

Now the author, TV show host and writer is banking on a resurgence in the “do-it-yourself” lifestyle to make her vision of a full-time crafting studio in Brooklyn viable.

Across the city, crafty folks like Ms. Bara are turning their homespun hobbies into money-making ventures, as evidenced by 19,000 city dwellers peddling wares on Etsy. But the transition from DIY to entrepreneur isn’t always as simple as sewing a straight seam.

“If you think you’re going to quit your job and sell five dollar patterns or craft you made on Etsy, you’re going to be disappointed,” said Patty Lyons, who left a 22-year-career as a Broadway stage manager to become a knitting instructor and, later, studio director for Lion Brand Yarn Company’s Manhattan store. Read More »

Opened in 1838, C.O. Bigelow on Sixth Avenue operates under the slogan, “If you can’t find it anywhere else, try Bigelow.” But in its 175th year, the storied pharmacy remains as noteworthy for the only-in-Manhattan mix of the famous and regular folk who search the shelves.

James Hirschfeld, CEO, left, and Alexa Hirschfeld, President, pose in the Paperless Post office in New York in January 2012.

Paperless Post, a startup founded by two 20-something siblings in 2009, plans to move to Lower Manhattan and add 76 new jobs, making it one of the larger startups to relocate to the area that the city and landlords are trying to make more enticing to growing companies.

The company has leased 12,500 square feet at 115 Broadway, one of two landmark buildings known as the Trinity Center. Paperless Post is currently located in a 7,000 square foot facility on West 25th Street in Chelsea, and in four years has already outgrown three offices. Read More »